Two questions: meta stuff, sample use, and mixing

First, for me I have spent most of my time thinking and using samples to replace hiring others musicians. …ie, when I was a kid, if I needed a bass line, I picked up my bass and played… as things moved forward, eventually, I used the typically large sample libraries (that cost painful money).

I have not spent much time thinking of how to mangle a sample into a musical device on its own.

Question: what is a good resource to get a grips on how to create full musical works with a single sample? … or how to understand samples in a nuanced way? How to apply musical principles (amplitude, duration, pitch, and timbre) to a sample?

I am trying to get a bigger view. I have heard killer stuff and I want to be able to actualize hip stuff too.

Second, my philosophy has always been to get the best recording of a source and then get it to sit in the mix.

The OT does not seem to facilitate that approach, or at least I am not hip to how yet. I could just record tracks separately and then “bounce down”… that seems counter productive to what the OT is. I am thinking I have to do the “mixing” on the way in.

I am just wondering how other people approach this? How do you control for “mud” and “smear”? How do you get a finished mix (pre master) in the OT?

I appreciate any insights. I also thank you for reading my post. As always Peace

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Keep a bit of headroom available, record at decent level, a VU meter really helps.

Cool and thank you… that makes a lot of sense.

Without utilizing an external VU meter (or mixer), would you suggest reading the OT (VU) dots as yellow dipping into green as good, or yellow occasionally jumping into red as good? Or just sticking with yellow?

Thank you :blush:

I tend to get them just to hit the red then dial it back a little, almost all sampling that I do goes into the OT via a mixer, so I pretty much never need to change anything. I always normalize in the OT then adjust gain in the attributes as necessary (usually reduction of gain) I rarely ever touch the track level, usually they are set to max so that if I want to use crossfader for level then it is predictable. The good thing about this approach (I think) is that by taking care of levels for each sample in attributes sample locking doesn’t result in mismatched levels, I daresay others do it differently but this way works for me.

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This video is sure to inspire some different methods of working with a single vocal sample, same principles can be carried into your own tunes.

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Thank you for the vid… I have been trying to apply some of the ideas and I had some success. If there are any more vids out there please hip me to them.